He doesn't transform.

That is so very important. It's so fatuous, the assumption that only a certain sort of person is worthwhile. It sounds like one strength of this movie was to show the value of him as he was--growing and deepening (as you say: becoming more three-dimensional) but not changing in an essential way. I like that a lot.

Also, what you say about saving the studio for the unseen people--it's a proletarian movie then, a movie that champions the worker, not the consumer. *yes*!